by Diana Palmer
“I like it very well. But I don’t plan to spend the rest of my life here, Matt. I’m not like Barrie. Cattle don’t mean the world to me.”
“It’s all been a game with you, has it?”
“What has?”
He stared out into the darkness. “Playing me off against Hal.”
“I wasn’t,” she protested. She shifted her head against his arm to stare up at him. “You’re the one who likes to play around, big cousin, you with your harem. You draw women like flies.”
“A certain type of woman,” he corrected. He drew on the cigarette, and she could see his hard, even profile in the red glow. “And for all you know, they could have been window dressing, young Catherine. I might have lived like a monk for the past two years.”
“Elephants might fly,” she replied. “You aren’t the monkish type.”
His eyes sought hers in the dim light coming from the windows. “Maybe I only want one woman.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “The oh-so-sophisticated Layne, of course.”
He paused for an instant before he spoke. “You’ve never been curious about my women before, Kit.”
That was true enough. “I’ve never been an adult before,” she replied gradually.
“You aren’t yet, either,” he murmured deeply. “What you know about men and sex could be written on the head of a straight pin.”
“Getting experience wasn’t easy with you and Mother bulldogging me,” she replied.
“The only experience you’ve got, I’ve given you,” he said under his breath. He looked down at her, his dark, warm eyes searching over her flushed face. “And it’s only beginning.”
“No, it isn’t,” she shot at him. “I won’t be a plaything!” She jerked away from him and got to her feet.
“So nervous,” he said gently. “So frightened. And if you’d open your eyes, Kit, you’d realize there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“That’s what you think!”
“It won’t hurt that much,” he said in a tone that sent chills down her spine. “Maybe not at all. I can be gentle.”
She went red and, choking on the attempt to fire back at him, she whirled and stormed back inside to the sound of his predatory laughter.
* * *
Whether it was a blessing in disguise or a curse, Catherine was much too busy in the following days to fence with Matt. Organizing the public relations end of the sale was the hardest work she’d ever done. There was one detail after another to see to, and getting out the invitations took the better part of two days. Ads had to be worked out for newspapers and trade magazines; there were the logistics of seating the crowds, name tags to buy, all the thousand and one tiny headaches that accompanied fitting out the ranch for the large number of guests.
“We’ll never get through addressing envelopes,” Angel wailed at the end of a particularly long day, “and I thought we were all finished!”
“I know,” Catherine said wearily. “Well, maybe now we are.”
The office door opened and Hal came in, looking flashy in slacks and a patterned blue shirt. “Hi,” he said. “Thought I’d look in on my way to Fort Worth for the races. Care to go with me, Kit?”
She was tempted, but there were still bits and pieces to coordinate. “Thanks anyway,” she said with a smile, “but I’m too far behind.”
“How dreadful.” Hal sighed. “Here I am, in my first trial, and there’s nobody to cheer me on.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and shot a curious glance at Angel, who seemed unusually intent on her typewriter. “Say, Angel, do you like auto racing?”
Angel’s eyes came up, big and black and nervous. “Why, yes,” she answered hesitantly. “My uncle used to race.”
Hal grinned. “Want to come to Fort Worth with me?” he asked softly. “We could go out to dinner afterward.”
“Well…”
“Go!” Catherine coaxed. “Matt won’t say anything. After all, it’s Saturday. We’ve both been working overtime, you know.”
Angel smiled shyly at Hal. “In that case, I’d love to go with you. Should I change?”
Hal studied the pretty floral dress she was wearing and slowly shook his head. “No way, honey. You look terrific.”
Angel actually blushed, not at all the cool, competent young woman Catherine had come to know. She had to hide a smile as they left, already deep in conversation.
Matt sauntered in minutes later, a puzzled frown crossing his face when he saw Catherine working alone.
“Did your help desert you?” he asked.
“She went off with Hal to cheer him to victory,” Catherine answered. “I told her I was sure you wouldn’t mind.”
“I do mind,” he said shortly. “You know Hal. I don’t want to lose the best secretary I’ve ever had. He’s a lady-killer.”
“Just look who’s talking,” Catherine chided, glaring up at him.
His dark eyes traveled slowly over the low-cut white blouse and gray slacks she was wearing, the perky gray dotted scarf at her throat. “I don’t kill them, honey. I seduce them,” he said in a wicked undertone.
“Hal won’t seduce Angel,” she promised him. “She knows karate.”
“Fat lot of good it will do her,” he murmured, “if Hal turns on the heat.”
“Men are a conceited lot,” she remarked as she finished the last envelope and put it beside the printer. “Boy, am I tired!”
“Suppose you come out to supper with me.”
She stared up at him uncertainly. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll buy you fried oysters, Kit,” he coaxed.
“For fried oysters, I’ll come,” she said, getting up and covering the printer. “But where are we going to find them around here?”
Two hours later, dining in an exclusive restaurant in Galveston, she didn’t have to repeat the question. Matt had hustled her off to the airport and they’d flown there in his private plane.
“I’m not really dressed for this,” she murmured, glancing around at all the elegantly dressed women.
“You look fine to me, honey,” he replied. He leaned back with a glass of Chablis in his lean hand, studying her across the white tablecloth. He was wearing slacks, a white turtleneck shirt and a blue blazer. He’d added the blazer in the plane; apparently he kept it there for just such emergencies.
“The barbecue’s set,” she told him.
“No business talk,” he said. “Tonight, we’re just a man and a woman.”
“How exciting,” she said with a smile. “What are we going to do?”
“That’s a leading question.” He sipped his wine. “What would you like to do, Catherine?”
“I think I’d like to be one of your women, just for a night,” she said, but it was pure bravado; she’d had two glasses of wine and she shouldn’t have.
“How do you think my evenings end, when I take out that kind of woman?”
She finished her second glass of wine. “I have a pretty good idea, and that’s not what I meant.”
He toyed with his glass, pursing his chiseled lips as he stared across at her. “We could start with some slow dancing,” he suggested.
“That sounds safe enough.”
It did, until Matt took her in his arms on the small dance floor while a live band played lazy blues tunes. He held her with both arms, while she linked hers around his neck. Although she’d gone to plenty of college parties, Catherine had never danced so close to a man she wanted. And she learned quickly that it was an intoxicating experience. It made her knees weak, made her body throb where it brushed so intimately against his. She looked up with all her uncertainties plain in her wide green eyes.
“Don’t be nervous,” he said gently, leaning down to brush his mouth over her forehead. “Think of it as making love to music.”
“That’s what it feels like, Matt,” she whispered, inhaling the clean, spicy scent of his skin, feeling the warm strength of his body.
“Yes, I know.” He made a sharp turn, and sh
e felt his thigh against her own and trembled. “Do you like that?” he asked at her ear and did it again.
“Oh, Matt,” she whispered shakily, clinging closer. She couldn’t seem to help herself; she wanted to be as near him as she could get. Her body ached with needs she was only now discovering.
His teeth found her ear and nibbled it gently. “I’ve got an apartment here,” he whispered.
“H-have you?”
“We could go there.”
Give me strength, she prayed. Her eyes shut tight. “No.”
“I wouldn’t hurt you,” he breathed.
Her legs trembled against his. “Don’t ask me.”
“I want you.”
“I know. But I can’t.”
He laughed softly. “Can’t you? I thought you were a modern girl, Kit. Or didn’t you know that this is how it’s going to be in New York? People hand out sex like a party favor in the circles you’ll be traveling in.”
She drew a little away from him and searched his mocking eyes. “Is that why you asked me? Is this an object lesson?”
“I think you need one, little innocent,” he said quietly.
“Then suppose you take me to your apartment, Matt, and teach me how to survive in the big city?” she challenged.
He held her at arm’s length a moment, and his dark eyes cut into hers, then ran down her slender body. Suddenly he pressed her close again, his hands clutching at her back. “I could teach you plenty,” he breathed. “But nothing would be the same afterward. Not between us, or with the family. And I could get you pregnant.”
She felt her cheeks go hot. “I thought men knew how to prevent it.”
“There are only two ways a man has,” he said gently, searching her eyes. “One is reliable but uncomfortable, and the other is uncertain at best. The best prevention I know of is strolling birth control,” he added with a wicked grin. “But you won’t go to movies with me these days.”
She hid her face against his broad chest, nuzzling him, feeling his strength as they circled the dance floor. She was throbbing with forbidden hungers, wanting nothing more than to lie with him in a big, cool bed and learn all the secrets, solve the mystery.
His lean hand smoothed over her back, warm and strong through the silky blouse, his fingers wandering from her neck to her waist. “Kit, are you wearing a bra?” he asked in a sultry whisper.
She felt her breasts going taut. “No,” she replied.
He tensed as they moved slowly to the music. “That’s too bad. Because when we get back to the plane, I’m going to take off this blouse and look at you.”
Her eyes came up, wide and shocked, and he held them ruthlessly, his body hard against hers, his hands seductively caressing her back.
“You don’t want to stay here any more than I do,” he said huskily. “Let’s go.”
She didn’t remember leaving the restaurant or the slow cab ride back to the plane. She was burning as if with a fever and was totally beyond rational thought.
Matt paid the cabdriver and let her go into the plane while he walked around the craft, checking it out. But when he finally got in and closed up the plane, it wasn’t to taxi out onto the runway.
He bent and lifted Catherine in his strong arms and sank into one of the wide, comfortable seats with her on his lap.
“Now,” he whispered, “we can have dessert.”
And as he finished speaking, his mouth crushed gently against hers, opening it to a slow, probing kiss. His free hand moved to her silky blouse, easing each button delicately from its buttonhole while she watched his face in a silence thick with desire.
He slowly peeled the blouse away from her taut, swollen breasts, and she lay quietly in his arms and let him look at her.
“My God, you’re lovely,” he whispered with something like reverence in his tone. “I’m almost afraid to touch you, Catherine.”
His fingers went down to her collarbone and traced patterns there. Her lips parted on a held breath as his fingers moved down slowly, lazily.
“You feel like silk, baby,” he breathed, letting his eyes follow the seductive movement of his fingers. “Except for these…so hard to the touch.”
He touched her nipples and watched her arch at the exquisite pleasure.
“Kit, I thought I had so much patience,” he whispered ruefully. He moved, lifting her up to his mouth. “But I’m hungry, too.”
He took one small, perfect breast right into his mouth, creating a warm, moist suction that made her cry out in a voice she didn’t recognize.
It was a maelstrom of feeling, of shocked pleasure, of anguished desire. She clung and cried while he devoured her from the waist up, letting her feel his tongue, his teeth. And it was the most beautiful experience of her entire life.
“Matt,” she whispered, her trembling hands in his dark hair, holding his mouth against her. “Oh, Matt, I never dreamed, never thought…!”
“I love the taste of you, baby,” he whispered against her body. “I love the smell of you, the sweet softness of you. Kit, I want you so!”
His mouth slid up her chin to cover her mouth, and he drew her against him, feeling her searching hands frantically lifting the bottom of his shirt so that her skin could merge with his hair-roughened chest. He shuddered as he felt her sinking against him, the warm, hard-tipped softness crushing so exquisitely into his hard muscles.
“I could die and I wouldn’t mind now,” she whispered huskily, clinging to him. “Oh, Matt, it feels so sweet…!”
“I know.” His arms tightened, and he ground her against him, rocking her gently, his mouth over hers, shuddering with the tenderness of a kiss that shook them both with its soft intensity.
“Silky little virgin,” he whispered unsteadily, “you don’t know how dangerous this is.”
“You said you wanted me,” she reminded him, glorying in the pleasure they were creating.
“I did. I do. And you want me. But we can’t make love for the first time in a parked airplane, Kit.”
“Why not?” she asked mindlessly, looking up at him with pleading eyes.
He caught his breath, letting her slide down into the crook of his arm so that he could feast his eyes on her sweet nudity. “God, you’re so exquisite, Kit!” he whispered, touching her delicately so that she shuddered with pleasure.
“I want you,” she whispered.
“Yes. But not like this,” he whispered back. He bent and kissed her eyelids closed, and then he buttoned her blouse, slowly, reluctantly. “When it happens, I want it in bed, in private, so that we have all night to enjoy each other.”
“When?” she whispered.
“Soon.” He bent and brushed his mouth over hers. “But right now, we have to get home. And I can’t fly with you in my arms, honey. I’d crash the plane.”
He eased her into a sitting position. “Come sit with me in the cockpit.”
She followed him, and let him strap her into the seat before he got into his own and put on the headphones. He flashed her a smile, and minutes later they were airborne.
It didn’t take long to get back to the ranch. The lights were all out except for one in the living room and one on the front porch, and when they got inside, it was to find Hal sitting up alone.
“Betty’s gone to play bridge with friends,” he told them. “And I’ve just taken Angel home,” he added with a strangely shy grin. “You two have fun?”
“We had oysters in Galveston,” Catherine volunteered.
“How interesting,” he commented with a grin.
“Stop that or I’ll make you marry me,” Catherine threatened.
“Okay, I’ll behave.” He sighed.
“Good night. Thanks for the dinner,” Catherine told Matt, a little disappointed that they didn’t have the house to themselves—and her eyes told him so.
“Good night, little cousin,” he said with a smile full of tenderness and memories.
She climbed the stairs reluctantly and got ready for bed. Minutes later, t
here was a light tap on the door. She opened it to find Hal outside.
“Matt says, will you trade rooms with him for tonight?” Hal said softly. “He says he wants to keep an eye on those new cattle of Barrie’s, and he can look out your window and see them.”
What an odd request, she thought, but she was so full of wine that it never registered just how strange the request was. “Okay,” she said, yawning, and pulled on her robe.
She climbed into Matt’s huge bed in the dark and was almost instantly asleep. So it came as a shock the next morning when she opened her eyes and found Matt sound asleep beside her—apparently without a stitch of clothing on, if his broad chest and flat stomach showing above the precarious sheet were any indication.
She sat up in bed, feeling woolly-headed from the night before, and stared down at him with her gown half off one shoulder. And just as she touched his chest to wake him, the door opened and there stood Betty, a cup of tea in her hand and disbelief on her face.
Chapter Ten
Betty stood for long moments like a statue in the doorway. Then she leaned forward, blinking, the cup of coffee hanging precariously in her fingers. She frowned, shook her head and went back out, leaving the door open.
“Matt, wake up!” Catherine squealed in a whisper. She shook him, feeling warm, hard muscle and rough skin and wanting to touch so much more than his broad shoulders.
His eyes opened slowly, looking up into hers. He smiled lazily. “Well, hello, angel. Did I die in my sleep?”
“What are you doing in here?” she burst out.
“It’s my bedroom. I think.” He sat up, disrupting the cover, and Catherine had a brief, shocking glimpse of what was under the sheet. “Yep, this is my bedroom, all right. What are you doing in it?” he added blankly, staring at her.
“Will you cover yourself up!” she groaned, averting her eyes and her feverish cheeks while he chuckled and dashed the sheet back over his hips.
Outside in the hall there were voices. Matt’s eyebrows arched as Betty came back with Hal in tow.
“You see?” Betty murmured, indicating the two still figures in bed. “I told you so.”
Hal peered at them, too. “I’m not sure. Maybe it’s an illusion. I drank last night. So did Matt.”